ARM? It is a magic word for me. It is not just a word, but the concept or principle that I’m going to apply in my life as a student and also as a future teacher. ARM represent three words, Active (A) , Reflection (R), and Modeling (M). Those three words are very important for me because it will help me a lot in my life and my future. ARM is the keyword for me within these 5 years and half for being here in UCSI University Terengganu Campus as one of the sponsored student by BPG. I must be an active person in all activities and I not going to be a passive person. Reflection ? I heard about reflection before this but I never thought that reflection can be applied in my daily life. Reflection or “critical reflection” refers to an activity or process in which an experience is recalled, considered, and evaluated. It is not about reflect my face in front of mirror but it is about life, everything that I do in my life and my future. I have to reflect myself every single day to be a better person. For being here in UCSI University, I have learnt a lot in my life. I learnt to be more independent, more creative and improve my communication skills. When my lecturers told me about ‘reflection’, I started to think about my past, my history. I want to be one of the excellent students here. I know there are a lot of works and effort that I have to do. Besides, everything that I want, I got to pay for it. Becoming a reflective student and future teacher is not easy for me because I must have a lot of knowledge and information to achieve that in my life. There are many ways that I can do to become a reflective student. Firstly, I must have my own journal. One of the procedure which is becoming more widely acknowledged as a valuable tool for developing critical reflection is the journal or diary. I choose journal because I want to make it simpler than diary so that I can share it through my blogs. Writing journal is very beneficial for me because I will record all the significant learning experiences. Besides that, journal will help me come into touch and keep in touch with self-development process that I taking place for me, so that I will never turn back into my past or do the same mistakes anymore. Not only that, journal give me the opportunity to express, in a personal and dynamic way, my self-development. Writing journal is important for me because it will help me a lot in my future because by writing journal in the second language, not in my mother’s tongue language, will improve my writing skills. Collaborative journal-writing brings benefits for me as I am going to be as second language teacher next five years and half. Not only in writing journal, I create a blog to share my experiences, my feelings with other bloggers. By reading one another’s blog entries, I am able to share my learning experiences with my friends and I learnt a lot from their writing. Becoming a reflective student are challenging for me because I have to think in different ways or in easiest word, I should have a critical thinking. The ability to think critically is probably the most transferable of the skills I will develop in university and my future employers will expect me to be able to use it to tackle professional challenges. It is very beneficial for me. There are few steps in critical thinking that I should have that are, knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Knowledge concerns ‘what there is to know’ and would include facts, terminology, classifications, and conventions. I must have a lot of knowledge that I could find as much as I can. Next, comprehension or ‘making sense of’ consists of translating, interpreting and extrapolating from the knowledge attained at the first level. I have to translate, interpret anything that I want to know and anything that I see. Application refers to an ability to use the knowledge and understanding of principles, methods, and theories to a ‘real world’ situation. Everything that I gain, I have to apply it my life but it is quite challenging for me to think critically because I have to understand all the principles or methods to my daily life. Sometimes, theories are not similar with the real world. Next, analysis involves breaking down material into its component parts and discovering and explaining the relationships between the parts. This may involve inductive or deductive thinking. Synthesis involves using the acquired knowledge in a new and unique way to solve problems and to predict likely consequences of actions. It involves my own creativity to solve the problems. Evaluation involves making judgements about the value of various methods, ideas, findings solutions. Judgements should be supported by evidences from researches or else. Being a student here really built me up because I have a lot of challenge here. Being far away from my home, my family is quite challenging for me because I have never been too far from my family but I am very happy because I could stand here until now. I have to be a positive student and always be an optimistic person so that I could think critically in my daily life and I could face and solves the problems here very well. Becoming a reflective student is not easy because everything that I do and I see, I must think ‘what’ and ‘why’. Everything that I knew, I must use it correctly. Being here in UCSI University for about 5 months give me a lot of changes in my life especially in my studies because I become more confident with myself after the effective communication lessons. I applied everything that I can as long as it gave benefits for me. Not only that, I became more positive in everything that I do. I will strive to achieve my focus in my studies. I want to get results with flying colours. Everything that I do is because I want to be the best among the best. I hope I could continue writing my journal for my future and to reflect
myself in my daily life. J
